The Year That Made the Musical: 1924 and the Glamour of Musical Theatre

The musicals of 1924 were animated “by an extraordinary confluence of old and new, the established and the innovative” that shaped theater scenes in London, Madrid, Vienna, and beyond, according to this stodgy study. Everett (coeditor of The Cambridge Companion to the Musical), a musicology professor at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, contends that a “transcontinental vitality” spread artistic influences, plays, and trends across the globe, noting that 1922’s For Goodness Sake was adapted for London stages in 1924 as Stop Flirting–swapping the original’s Long Island setting for a posh country estate, and becoming a smash hit that catapulted Fred and Adele Astaire to stardom. On Broadway, musicals such as Wildflower, which was set in Italy, capitalized on American fascination with different cultures. Elsewhere, Everett argues that even as the Jazz Age took shape and more “progressive attitudes towards race” emerged, “racist structures and depictions remained firmly in place” in such Broadway shows as The Chocolate Dandies, a musical which “straddl[ed] a line between offering a sophisticated Black show and giving white audiences what they wanted” by playing on expectations of “minstrel humor.” While such arguments intrigue, they’re overshadowed by Everett’s resolutely chronological, musical-by-musical approach, which leaves little room for sustained analysis. Dry, workmanlike prose doesn’t help matters. This fails to do justice to the glitter and drama of the roaring ’20s. (Aug.)